Mr. Shovel Weaves His Magic on a New City of Night

It was three years ago, to the day that Mark Sovel, Indie 103.1’s illustrious music director (aka Mr. Shovel) had his last airshift on Indie. The next day, for all intents and purposes, Indie died.

It continued on (and continues on to this day, a shell of its former self) in Internet-only format. Which would be great if the powers that program it really knew what to do with it. And, of course, if Mr. Shovel was still there.

I remember it well. I turned on my radio (yes, I actually had a box sitting by my window that had FM stations, though the only one it was tuned to was Indie 103.1, of course). I turned on TK’s program in the morning, and everyone was talking about how great the station had been. Like using past tense about it.

Soon enough, with one final My Way (not the Frank Sinatra version), Indie was gone.

I sobbed at my radio that day, I sobbed all the way up to Sundance (driving, that’s a whole lotta sobbing). In many ways, I’m sobbing still. It hurts when the best radio station that ever existed goes away.

And what has been my music repast in the intervening three years? Well, being a digital girl, I’m big on Internet radio. I keep hoping someone somewhere will develop actual radio on the Internet. Like a Huffington Post for radio. (Well, except that pays people. Ok, bad example.)

I never really got into Pandora or Slacker, though I have friends who swear by both. I have friends who seek out all kinds of stations on the Internet. One cool one that played 60s music from Paris really intrigued me for awhile.

But after the wealth of musical treasure that was Indie, nothing really sufficed. There were people from Indie who left to develop other things. Kurt St. Thomas went off to develop Houndstooth Radio (www.houndstoothradio.com ), which I admit, I listen to more than anything.

Chuck P. and Henry Rollins ended up over at KCRW.

Chris Morris still puts out a great show on the Scion Network:

http://scionav.com/radio17/12/Watusi-Rodeo

And a whole passel of ex-Indie-ites migrated over to Moheak Radio. Trouble is, every time I try to listen to it, it either pushes a bunch of annoying ads at me, or I have technological problems receiving it. Every time. So I don’t.

There are still some good tunes on Indie dot com, but the heart and soul (aka Mark Sovel) is gone. As he said when he left, “it’s like someone’s just playing their iPod for you.” (There are a couple of good shows here or there. I particularly like Bob Forrest’s Wednesday night show, “All Up in the Interweb,” which airs at 8 pm PST. Native Wayne’s show is fun too. My friend still listens to Retrograde, and wins tickets from them.

But pretty much, for me, there is nothing there worth listening to anymore. Nothing that made Indie Indie. (This is true of Moheak, too, btw, no matter how many ex-Indieites are there.)

Cause what made Indie “one of the best stations in the country,” according to Rolling Stone magazine, was quite simply its music director, Mark Sovel.

And he has been very quiet on the music front in that three years. Giving us bits of his genius with an amazing LobsterFest regularly, and other concerts curated here or there. But on the radio scene, he’s been silent.

Until now.

Mark Sovel’s first air show in three years (other than filling in for folks occasionally) aired Saturday, Jan. 14. Three years to the day of his last one.

It’s called “City of Night,” and it airs on college radio station KCSN (88.5 on your terrestrial radio dial, also available online and with a cool iPhone app that will record shows for you. LOVE that.). From 8 – 11 pm every Saturday.

One can’t help but wonder what’s up with this college station, KCSN. Sovel thanked the program director, Sky Daniels, by saying that he “made him want to get into radio.” He wasn’t kidding either. Hm.

In addition to Mr. Shovel, Daniels also brought on Sat Bisla, who has been airing Passport Approved on every station that’ll have him, it seems; and Terry Nunn, of Berlin fame. He had already brought on KCRW’s Nic Harcourt to do a show and Julie Slater. Radio heavyweights, to be sure. Hm.

The rest of the program schedule is an odd mix, a local blues maven called “Ann the Raven” has a show on Sundays. So does Robert Hilburn, the writer. There’s some Dylan, some roots music, some Americana and some bluegrass. And opera. Mr. Daniels, it seems has no problem with specialty shows.

Well, I don’t know about all that. Not sure if I’ll be checking out all those other choices. I do know this.

Mr. Shovel is on Saturday nights. His first show was like manna in the desert. Such great music played, and all over the musical spectrum. Some things you would expect: a number of local bands, some OMD, some Jam. Many things you wouldn’t expect.

He kicked it all off with the Rolling Stones’ “On with the Show.” Perfect. Not long after, some Pink Floyd. You heard me. Pink Floyd. And Zepplin, as in Led. One song from Indie’s regular rotation: Depeche Mode’s “Get the Balance Right,” and boy DID HE!

As usual with a Shovel show, it was all perfectly timed. Like puzzle pieces falling into place. The Kinks, for heaven’s sake. Followed by local band, Saint Motel, who enlivened Tar Fest this fall (Shovel curated part of it).

A song I can’t get enough of: Split Endz’ “Six Months in a Leaky Boat.” And another (I love it so much) Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.” It just makes me happy to hear that song.

Gil Scott-Heron. Jimi Hendrix. Wow. LA band The Blood Arm from their “Berlin period” (aka now). Brand-new Giant Drag, and Sharkey’s Night, for gosh sakes (with William S. Burroughs).

And, if you’ll recall, Mr. Shovel is the one who spots the hot bands before anyone else does. His recommendation from this show? Electric Guest. Watch that name. You heard it here first (I promise you).

I could go on and on, but if you want to know where Indie went, you could look to that whole passel of people who talk about it incessantly, or you could simply look at this playlist for a minute.

http://www.mrshovel.com/2012/01/15/city-of-night-playlist-january-14-2012/


That Dylan song he played made me cry. Followed up by some cuts from local bands from a Dylan tribute album, which is a fundraiser for Amnesty International called “Chimes of Freedom.” Airborne Toxic Event doing “Boots of Spanish Leather.” Silversun Pickups doing “Not Dark Yet.” Cage the Elephant (ok, they’re not from LA, but the song was great) doing “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.”

I was literally so overwhelmed after all this good music after his show, it took me several hours to calm down. Oh, Mr. Shovel how we’ve missed you!

Tune in to the next City of Night next week at 8 pm. And pray really hard that they get podcasts sometime.

******************************

Sizzle or Steak?

I consider myself a journalist first and foremost. News beats in every fiber of my being. After that, maybe a designer, maybe a writer.

I want to comment on this article a friend sent me, based on several things that happened this week.

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2011/02/28/expand-your-social-media-mix-twitter-alone-is-not-enough/

First, the Associated Press, long our go-to news source (and yes, we newspapers paid heftily for the priviledge) chastized their reporters publicly for "Tweeting" while they were in the thick of the drama down at #OccupyWallStreet this week.

The traditional way, you see, would be for said reporter to get said news, go back to the newsroom with it (hopefully getting at least two sources for said news along the way). Give it to one's editors, and then the editors would do what they do, bending it, shaping it, making it ready for public consumption (in the case of AP, on all (paid) outlets that AP streams out on).

Twitter has changed that.

I also covered (as a journalist) the events of #OccupyWallStreet and #OccupyLA and other events in the Day of Action this week (Nov. 17). Using the social media at my disposal: mostly Twitter, also Facebook.

Twitter changed the way I process news.

I like and respect Jeremiah Owyang, and read him on Twitter and other outlets. However, in this instance, he's missing the point.

As a designer, they used to tell me: know your tools. Know which one to use for which purpose. So it is, too, with social media.

While all his comments about permanency and Twitter are valid (sure, I wish they had an archive function, or a timeline thingie like Facebook is about to have, but they don't). Permanence is not the importance of Twitter, nor is "time spent there wasted."

Twitter for me (sorry, AP) has become my primary news source. We have raised a generation of news junkies, and we want it now, and we want it fast. Twitter gives us that primacy.

Let me illustrate for you a story, of part of my week, how my "social media" life went.

I spent a good chunk of the early morning Day of Action online. I was multi-tasking between Twitter and Facebook. (I have a large contingent of friends on Facebook who still don't see the value or need for Twitter. Sadly.)

So, as the story of the day: Day of Action, mostly #OccupyWallStreet was breaking (a story, I might add, that MSM journalists were barred from covering, thanks to Bloomberg's "media blackout"), I was manning the controls. I had my news sources in action who were in the thick of things.

I was monitoring my Twitter feed. When items came across, I would cross post them (RTing them to my stream (2000 people) and posting them on my FB wall (1300+ people). Who then reposted to their streams and walls. I posted pictures, I posted video, I posted commentary. I heard when the first people got arrested, I heard when the police captain offered himself up. I was, as much as I could be, right there in the thick of it.

That's how news works today. (Several people sent me emails that day, thanking me for my coverage.)

The AP journalist KNEW that, yet was chastized for it. (It's against company policy.) If you are right there, on Wall Street, you have the news as close as your Twitter feed. That's as much as you have control of it today, because everyone around you also has a camera and access to the world.

So for me, monitoring my Twitter feed (which I do at least daily) takes the place of reading my daily newspaper. It is certainly "steak" for me on great news days, though when people are just talking about nonsense, it isn't.

I don't consider one iota of time that I spend on Twitter "wasted." I wish I could spend MORE time there. I wish I could've spent all of the Day of Action on Twitter, for example.

Owyang says: "if you Tweet more than 20 times a day, you should have just blogged."

Everyone uses these tools differently. For me, I use Facebook as a platform to get information to my friends and family. (Especially those who, for whatever reason, aren't even ON Twitter yet.) I use Twitter as a short-term news source, but also for whatever bursts of items I may want to discourse about: whatever's happening on Survivor or Dancing with the Stars, some movie or song I just experienced, etc. If it's a longer thing that warrants a blog, I'll write one. I have two blogs, in fact.

But while many people use Twitter to post links to people (I primarily use FB for that), I most frequently now ReTweet others. I follow 2000 people. I ReTweet the interesting bits for others in my stream. As far as my own posts, I probably don't do 20 in a day, but on some news-heavy days, I can be RTing 100+ times.

I also "live blog" frequently on Twitter: the Oscars, the Emmys, Survivor and its finale; or sometimes conferences that I'm at. The first few is to share a communal experience with people, the conference stuff is for people who can't get there.

It has never been (for me) about "what did I have for breakfast?" It is very much about "what am I seeing/hearing/feeling/experiencing right now?"

Owyang wants to get people over to things that make money for him. I am about documenting our social journey. For me, Twitter IS the steak. If I had to only live with ONE choice for social media, it would be Twitter, in a heartbeat.

If people want to know more deeply how I feel about an issue, they can friend me on Facebook, or read my blogs. Or listen to my podcasts. There are vehicles for everything. I think anyone who forcefully weans themselves from any social medium is an idiot. (As is anyone who still isn't anywhere on this value chain.) We are all still learning and growing with these new tools, and learning how they best work for us.

I have a friend that I had to drag, kicking and screaming, to get onto Facebook this week. He's an actor, wondering why his agent isn't calling him so much. "Are you on Twitter? Facebook?" I innocently asked him one day. Turned out, he hadn't ever even SEEN a Facebook page. (This was about a month ago.) I'm sorry, but that's inexcusable.

I mean, I suppose, if you really have a spiritual vow to be a hermit, it would be ok. But if you are living, breathing and alive in the world, it's inexcusable. Especially if your work is as an actor!!! When you are depending on casting directors to cast you. "Did you know about all the casting directors who are on Twitter?" I asked him. His face paled, he looked incredulous. "Well, no." "Huh. And have you been working a lot lately?" I continued. "Well, no."

EXACTLY.

Twitter is a news source, a job source, a living breathing hive of activity. To cut oneself off from it... you might as well be typing on an electric typewriter and watching a black/white TV.

I understand Owyang's point. There are lots more types of new software coming at us that we have to learn. But we have to put a stake in the ground with the ones we have, and realize why they are important. If you choose two social media to be on: Facebook and Twitter would be the ones right now. And you should be checking both every day.

And, if you also want to visit my blog or listen to my podcasts and give me money: hey, that's OK too! ;-)